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Look, it's just logistics.
Every year there's lots of movies worth talking about and only so many episodes of this show.
So we like to take a moment at the end of the year to look back and spotlight a few favorites we just didn't have time to get around to.
We've got a weird political thriller, a funny feminist fable.
One story where love finds a way in a very unlikely place and another where it endures under the most challenging of circumstances.
I'm Aisha Harris.
And I'm Glenn Weldon.
And today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're recommending great movies we missed in 2025.
Joining us today is NPR film critic Bob Mondello.
Hey, Bob.
Hey, it's good to be here.
Great to have you.
Also with us is Philadelphia Inquirer's arts and entertainment editor and film critic Badatri D Chaudhry.
Hey, Badatri.
Hello, hello.
Hello.
Look, y'all picked some winners, so I want to get right to this.
So for this episode, each of us is going to offer up one film recommendation from the year that didn't get its own Pop Culture Happy Hour episode.
Aisha, kick us off with one that we all wanted, but you got.
Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
I got it first.
This is a movie that blew me away.
The Secret Agent.
Drumroll.
Yes.
Okay.
The Secret Agent, it's written and directed by Cleber Mendonça Filho.
And this stars Wagner Mora, who I think a lot of American audiences will probably recognize as having played Pablo Escobar on Narcos.
This is set in 1977 against the backdrop of the Brazilian military dictatorship.
Mm-hmm. as well as Carnival Week.
So there's a lot of sort of dissonance going on here.
And he plays a widowed former educator and also a political refugee, who returns under an alias to Recife to be closer to his young son.
And his young son is being raised by his father-in-law.
That's the basic premise, but so much more is going on here.
Filio really immerses us in this mood.
It contrasts, you know, the festive celebration and the political turmoil, corruptions being sown by the government.
It also jumps back and forth in time with a really just very easeful way.
And it's a large ensemble, right?
There's a lot of people and a lot of moving parts.
And we don't automatically know how they all connect together.
But every character, even the ones we only see for maybe a scene or two, are just so locked in.
You understand them.
I think my favorite character might be Tanya Maria, who is playing Dona Sebastiana.
Oh my God.
Yes.
Okay.
So she's, this older woman who is constantly smoking, has the gravelly voice to prove it, but she's also very spry and spunky and she's sheltering Marcelo and other refugees.
And there's just a really lovely moment where they first meet.
She's showing him around the place and she just does this thing where she's like I'm just happy to help, you know, and she like, does a lock zip.
And it's just like there's just all these little great moments in this movie that really come together.
And also the cinematography.
Beautiful.
So beautiful.
That's done by Evgenia Alexandrova.
I've said enough.
Everyone else here has seen it.
How are we feeling about this?
It's so wonderful.
Jaws.
Oh, my God, Jaws.
I had such a good time with this movie.
Jaws and the leg.
Oh, my God.
Absolutely.
I was trying to figure out how I would summarize it if I were doing it.
You just did a wonderful job.
But there's so much more to it.
Oh, my God.
It's everywhere.
It's also the cinephilia in this film.
And it's interesting that the director was a film critic and a programmer before he started making films.
And you can see that.
And how much... And Recife is a town that keeps showing up in his films.
But also, such a love letter.
I know this is such a much-abused phrase, but this is also such a love letter to cinema.
There are pivotal scenes that happen in... in a theater, it's such a perfect, beautiful film.
I mean, beautiful is a strange word because there's a lot of blood and gore in this film.
And he is such a master world builder.
You could have never stepped a foot in Brazil and you would know exactly who these people are, what this world is.
And yeah, it's very masterful.
I'm so glad you picked this one, because I don't know if we're conveying to people who haven't seen it how weird it is, how wonderfully weird.
There's a framing device that gets introduced, as you mentioned, midway through the film.
You're like, what?
And then there's that interlude about the leg that comes out of nowhere.
And it's just the it's this weird fantasy interlude.
It's there for a reason, because you realize oh, it's here for the power of propaganda, because there's a ridiculous story that the government is putting out that is literally unbelievable.
But the point you quickly realize is that people are just loving it.
No one's trying to convince them of anything.
They're just trying to distract them.
And it's so smart about that.
And it's also got.
You know, as we mentioned, the violence sometimes kind of comes off as kind of Tarantino-esque grimy violence.
But there is this warmth that just pervades the film.
Oh, absolutely.
That Mora especially is just radiating.
He loves his kid.
He wants to know about his mother.
He's so, so good.
It's so warm.
It's so weird to talk about a film like this.
And just what I came away with is just how warm and wonderful it is.
What a terrific movie.
That is The Secret Agent.
It is now in theaters.
See it if you can.
All right.
Bob, what's up next?
Well, I went to the Middleburg Film Festival and there was a movie that I almost didn't watch because it just sounded like it was not going to be my cup of tea.
And yet the filmmaker, Ryan White, had made a picture before that I quite liked.
He's a documentarian, and he made a picture called Goodnight Oppie, which was about the Mars rover.
And I was kind of blown away by that one, and I thought, okay, I'll give it a try.
And there is no way that I'm going to be able to make this sound as upbeat and rousing and hilarious as it is.
But this movie is called Come See Me in the Good Light.
Yep.
And it was made by Ryan White at the urging of comedian Tig Notaro that he should look at Andrea Gibson, poet and spoken word star, and their life partner and fellow poet Megan Fowley.
It was mid-pandemic, and so the crew embedded with them and had access to the couple's every thought and action as they dealt with mailbox madness and turtle dove love.
Just all this weirdness.
And here's the part where you say, no, this does not sound like a good time.
Gibson's stage four ovarian cancer journey.
Yeah.
And oh my God, what they do with this.
And I was just sort of blown away by it.
Gibson approaches all of this with such an affirmative outlook that it doesn't brook tears, particularly.
And it's a very emotive thing.
Even in times of despair, the story has this radiance that just makes it kind of goosebump raising.
It's just gorgeous.
I watched it at SF Film.
I had not ever been to a spoken word poetry event.
I'm not clued into the culture at all.
And I was very surprised at how touching the film is.
And Andrea, as we might know, has since passed, but they were still alive when I watched the film.
And it was just so beautiful to witness.
It's a lesson in how to approach end of life in a way that is joyful, creative and does justice to the life you've led.
The documentary does not reduce them or their love to the last few days, but looks at this retrospection into the life you've led.
And there's so much to celebrate in the film.
I was definitely surprised by how touched and emotional I was.
Well, I wasn't – actually, I wasn't surprised by how emotional I was.
I was surprised at how much I was laughing.
This is maybe the most life-affirming tough sit that I've ever tough sat through.
They're funny and they're artsy and they are unsentimental.
And the film –
I mean, it gives you just the barest taste of what they went through, but it's still a lot.
I mean, there are moments where they are so conscious of the camera that they address it directly.
And there's other moments, of both joy and despair, where they have clearly forgotten it's there and what we see is so raw and real and powerful.
And beautiful, yes.
I'm glad I saw it.
I also was like, here we go.
But I'm so glad I saw it.
That is Come See Me in the Good Light.
It is streaming on Apple TV.
Thank you very much, Bob.
But, Datria, what you got for us?
My pick is an Indian film called Cactus Pears.
It is in the Marathi language, which is the language spoken in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
The original title is Sabar Bonda.
Why I love this film is it is a queer love story set not in a big city, because you know there is this idea that gay people only it's a big city, liberal thing.
But it's set in rural Western India.
The main protagonists are Anand, played by actor Bhushan Manoj, and Balya, played by actor Suraj Suman.
Basically, Anand loses his father.
His father's passed away.
And he lives in Mumbai, which is a big city, and goes to his native rural village.
For the period of mourning and to do like the kind of grieving rituals that, in his culture, that should follow the death of your father.
And this is where he reconnects, falls in love in the most beautiful way possible, in the middle of grief, with his childhood friend, Balya.
And I like this film because, again, it's a queer love story.
It doesn't make too much noise about, you know, the gayness that is a part of the story, but not the focus.
And it's a big deal in India, right?
You have to understand that homosexuality was criminalized till very recently.
The gay marriage is not legal yet.
So you read the reviews online of this film, and tender and gentle are two objectives that keep coming up.
And it's true.
And it's true to, like you know, in a country where homosexuality is talked of in these very, you know thick, highlighted terms.
This is such a soft, beautiful, gentle love story.
Beyond the love story.
It's about grief, it's about friendship, it's about family.
How do you find a sense of comfort within grief?
What does love do when you're grieving, just like?
What does it mean to like stand up for someone you love?
It just gets into this cultural specificities of queer love.
Like you know, in the way the western media or the western culture has kind of presented homosexuality is like this in out closet, straight.
It's not those binaries.
Sure, do the families of these men think they're straight?
Yeah, they delude themselves, but it doesn't necessarily mean these men are not quote-unquote out.
I just think it does such beautiful things within all these structures that are in place in India, especially rural, small-town India.
And both the actors.
They're not big name actors of the industry, but they just are so genuine and their performances are beautiful.
So that's Cactus Bears, written and directed by Rohan Kanawadi, and it's playing in select theaters now.
And if I can just put in a word for how pretty it is, I mean, it's really quite beautiful.
I remember a scene where they're – are they sitting under the tree?
I looked at the tree and thought, whoa, that is – I mean, it's just a beautiful shot.
It could be in Waiting for Godot.
It's quite lovely as a film.
Yeah, tender, quiet, mournful certainly, a bit deliberate, right?
It moves at its own pace.
Absolutely.
And this is – when it ends up on streaming, it's going to get lumped into the.
You know sexy LGBTQ plus romance.
And I'm like –
I mean, sure, yes.
So much more, yeah.
It's so much more than that.
I mean, our main character is very passive because, of course, he would be.
He's grieving.
But that's such a big risk narratively because he's grieving and things just sort of happen to him in this movie, including the attentions of his old friend.
And that passivity is what really... is complicated and chewy.
It also makes the romance kind of complicated.
And there's something about seeing aversion to queer relationships come from someplace different from where I'm used to seeing it come from, which is this American puritanical, performative moralism.
This just has a different flavor rooted in family.
The opposition, I think, is treated very fairly.
These people in this village are not cartoonish.
They're not outsized.
And what's fascinating, as you touched on Badatri, is that the family seems more offended, more by the fact that he won't tell them the truth.
Yes.
Are we outsiders to you than by the truth itself?
And, like, the fact is they're right.
He has made them outsiders just to protect himself.
And, of course, the fact that some things transcend culture.
Near the end of the film, over dinner, he tries to apologize to his uncle for something.
And the uncle says, don't worry, eat.
And I was like, yep.
It's universal.
Here we go.
Shut up and eat.
I love this movie.
Cactus Pears, as you mentioned.
It is in select theaters now.
All right.
My pick is 100 Nights of Heroes.
Thank you so much for having me.
There's a young bride played by Micah Monroe in this deeply patriarchal society.
So alternate history, right?
Her rich, noble husband goes away without consummating their marriage for weird reasons.
And he enlists his friend, played by Nicholas Galitzine, to test her fidelity every night by staying at their manor castle thing and attempting to seduce her every night.
And her maid, Hero...
It's played by Emma Corrin, and she attempts to intervene by telling a long story that distracts the suitor for 100 nights until her husband returns.
So you know it's an homage to 1001 Nights, of course, but it's also very British, very dry, very crisp.
And it makes use of Nicholas Galatzin's bohunk status.
He is just hilariously objectified in this film as this bohunk preening dude who poses in like loose tunics and tight pants.
And he always finds his light, right?
He hits those cheekbones just so.
And there are several shots of him shirtless dragging a dead deer back to the palace for dinner.
It becomes hugely funny how Hero just is not picking up on what this guy's putting down.
Like, she doesn't get what anybody would see.
And as to the goofiness of the movie...
Charlie XCX has a supporting role.
I couldn't tell you why.
Wait, what?
Yes, she does.
Okay, I need to watch this now.
I need to watch this now.
And I also say what you want from this film is for our two leads to overthrow their patriarchy.
But even in a fantasy world, that doesn't happen overnight.
So in the end, I think it ended just exactly how it had to, which is all you can ask of a story.
And also, not for nothing, comes in at a tight 90 minutes.
Yes, it does.
I love a tight 90 minutes.
Yes.
And I will say Charli XCX is fully in her acting bag now.
I saw her in a movie at the Toronto Film Festival, and she has a few projects that are in the works.
So it's interesting to see her go into this mode.
One of the things I love about it is the sort of sly humor element.
There's all these guards around who are also sitting around.
And there's a moment where we realize, oh, the guards are here too.
And they insert themselves in just the right amount.
They're not the big comic sidekicks.
We don't ever really spend time with them.
But every time they kind of just make it known that they are listening, they are there.
It's funny.
It is very, very fun.
I agree with you, Glenn.
This is a fun hang, but also has a little bit of subversiveness in there and is light and crisp and beautiful.
Yeah.
I'm sold.
I'm sold, too.
It's a weird little movie.
If you're in the mood for a weird little movie, it is in select theaters now.
But, man, it's a lot of fun.
That's 100 Nights of Hero.
And those are our picks, folks.
Is your favorite movie of the year one that we didn't talk about?
You can let us know what it is.
We're on Facebook.
We're on Letterboxd.
There are links to those in our episode description.
That brings us to the end of our show.
But Dr. D. Chaudhry, Bob Mandello, Ayesha Harris, thank you so much for being here.
Great picks.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
It was great.
Thank you.
This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Kayla Lattimore and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Hello Come In provides our theme music.
We recorded this episode before we learned of the death of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer and producer, Michelle Singer Reiner.
Rob Reiner, of course, starred in All in the Family, and he went on to direct some of the most beloved films of all time, including This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally.
As of this recording, their deaths are being investigated as a homicide.
Our colleagues at NPR are closely following this story.
You can find more at NPR.org.
Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.
